Will Ferrell will be joining "The Office" for four episodes at the end of Steve Carell's run. ( Los Angeles Times ) It's official: This year's Coachella is sold out. ( Los Angeles Times ) Indie darlings Wilco just got even more indie: They've formed their own music label. ( Los Angeles Times ) "Skins' " creator says his show is the "opposite of pornography. " Does that mean people who are against the show are actually pro-pornography? ( Los Angeles Times )

Less than a year before the 2008 collapse of Lehman Bros. plunged the global economy into a terrifying free fall, the Wall Street firm awarded nearly $700 million to 50 of its highest-paid employees, according to internal documents reviewed by The Times . The documents, which were among the millions of pages submitted in Lehman's bankruptcy, show the list of top earners each were pledged $8 million to $51 million in cash, stock and other compensation....

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department plans to file a civil lawsuit against Standard & Poor's for its ratings of mortgage-related investments leading up to the financial crisis, the company said Monday. The suit focuses on S&P's ratings in 2007 of some collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs -- securities that pool bonds and other assets, the company said. Such a suit "would be entirely without factual or legal merit," S&P said. "It would disregard the central facts that S&P reviewed the same subprime mortgage data as the rest of the market - including U.S. government officials who in 2007 publicly stated that problems in the subprime market appeared to be contained - and that every CDO that DOJ has cited to us also independently received the same rating from another rating agency," S&P said.

NEW YORK - Bank of America has been found liable for fraud in the sale of faulty loans by its Countrywide mortgage unit, a major victory for the federal government as it continues to pursue cases stemming from the financial crisis. A federal jury in Manhattan sided with prosecutors who alleged Countrywide Financial Corp. churned out risky home loans in a process called "the Hustle" and then sold them to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Calabasas company, once considered the crown jewel of American mortgage lending, made big profits unloading loans that were later rendered worthless during the housing crisis in 2008.

The backlash against Standard & Poor's for downgrading the U.S. credit rating adds to the company's problems in the nation's capital, where it faces investigations for its role in fueling the financial crisis with faulty assessments of mortgage-backed securities. S&P and the other credit-rating firms are widely believed to have enabled the near market meltdown by giving AAA ratings to many securities backed by risky subprime mortgages. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission called the credit-rating companies "essential cogs in the wheel of financial destruction.

Stocks bounced back Wednesday as the first day of hearings on the financial crisis, though contentious at times, turned out to be more civil than some investors had feared. The market also got a boost from a Federal Reserve report showing continued modest improvement in the country's regional economies. Ten of 12 Fed districts reported a positive change in conditions while two reported mixed conditions. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 53 points, erasing its 36-point loss Tuesday, which marked Wall Street's first broad decline this year.

The former head of the division that brought down American International Group Inc. and triggered a huge government bailout broke a two-year public silence Wednesday, defending his actions at the insurance giant and saying he could have saved taxpayers money if he had remained there. "I think I would have negotiated a much better deal for the taxpayer than what the taxpayer got," Joseph Cassano, who ran AIG's financial products unit, told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

Critics of Congress' financial reform proposals complain that lawmakers are shooting first and asking questions later. After all, Congress doesn't yet know what caused the problem it's trying to solve; the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that's analyzing the 2008 Wall Street meltdown won't finish its report until December. We disagree. Lawmakers already have a clear picture of the system's weaknesses. Companies can become so big and interconnected that the entire financial system would be damaged if they failed.